Thursday, May 11, 2006

[Spying]

Your Call May be Monitored.

Remember when the USA Today used to be a joke? (Speaking of joke, how about burying the lead behind a random non sequitor? Ah, blogs.) Anyhoo, the scuttlebutt this morning arrives from the brightly-colored former joke scored to dramatic music:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

This falls into the nebulous world of data mining, which, truth be told, there may be a call for. But of course, most of the newer techniques are now all woefully compromised (the word "compromised" is the key adjective of Bush's second term) at the hands of Meester Black Sites.

As far as I can tell, looking at Memorandum, every single blog, including those dealing mainly with cats and Britney Spears, is discussing the story today. There are still a fringe of now comically entertaining defenders of the administration, and their take appears to be that it's the leakers who are the problem. The cat bloggers are concerned, while the Britney fans are in denial. Everyone else is outraged.